Alexa DeJean
Danielle Leubbe
English 1020
8 March 2015
Intelligence in Blue-Collar Jobs
In his essay titled “Blue Collar Brilliance”, Professor Mike Rose reports on society’s narrow-minded views on the intellectual resources of people performing jobs that entail manual or service labor. Rose criticizes that stories about blue-collar workers generally miss the focus on the intellectual demand their jobs require. Rose proclaims that the type of work a person does or belonging to a certain social class does not define a person’s intelligence. In fact, in the personal stories he shared with us, direct experience is the main source of learning, as opposed to a formal higher education. In Rose’s observant study of manual workers, he describes their work as educational in every perspective. Although some jobs do not require high literacy skills, they have a
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He believes all workers no matter what they do, hold some kind of important intelligence other than what we expect. The audience that this essay is aimed at is the white-collar workers, they are those who believe that blue-collar workers are not intelligent and that their type of work does not require much skill and that it is easy, in which it is not. Rose uses pathos exceptionally in his essay by telling a detailed story about his mother, Rosie, to gain approval and to establish an emotional connection. This rhetorical appeal brings out a strong sense of persuasion and passion that is expressed by Rose. This article is written as a rebuttal and perfectly exhibits its logical aspect of arguments to establish a connection between past and present beliefs regarding blue-collar job, this is called logos. Through long and extensive research, Rose defends the credibility of blue-collar workers and their jobs and brings out appreciation and support from those who did not respect the blue-collar workers in the first
In any successful work of non-fiction, authors employ the use of rhetorical analysis to articulate their main points and ideas. Mike Rose’s essay, “Blue Collar Brilliance,” focuses on the fact that looking down on blue-collar workers is a common occurrence in America and people fail to understand how a person can be intelligent if they had dropped out of school. Throughout the essay, he refutes this notion and explains why blue-collar intelligence may be different from the intelligence gained by years of schooling but it is of the equal stature, since it helps them in their occupation. Rose uses pathos and other rhetorical devices to inform the audience of his belief: blue-collar workers are under appreciated and overlooked as many people fail to see the difficulties and cognitive demands involved in their daily routines at work.
In “Blue Collar Brilliance” Mike Rose starts of by telling us two stories, one about his mother and the other about his uncle Joe. They worked what people would call blue collar jobs; everybody usually perceives blue collar jobs as grunt work which doesn’t take much intelligence to work. However Rose disagrees with that notion; Rose describes to us in detail how his moms’ intellect in the restaurant work field kept the place calm, efficient and balanced. He also told us a story of how his uncle Joe worked up the ranks of the auto industry after dropping out of school in the ninth grade. One of Rose’s main points in “Blue Collar Brilliance” is that intelligence isn’t always measured with grades and tests and, that blue collar jobs take just
In the article “Blue-Collar Brilliance”, Mike Rose’s main focus was to convey that there are forms of intelligence than just being intellectual. Rose, suggest that a broader perspective of education allow us to expand our understanding of what intelligence is. Rose explains what our culture views as intelligence: “Our cultural iconography promotes the muscled arm; sleeve rolled tight against biceps, but no brightness behind the eye, no image that links hand and brain” (Rose). In making this comment, Rose urges us to take a step back and to look society’s perception of blue-collar work as not as demanding or requiring as much brain powering as white-collar work. Often people do not realize that a person who has a blue-collar job is just as
There are many different types of jobs in the world; some of which people feel are better than others. Factors like the amount of money and amount of education affect the stereotypical perception about certain jobs. There are two different types of work, blue-collar and white-collar. Blue-collar jobs are seen as the “working class”. The “Working class” refers to low-wage workers that are void of a college education, who struggle to get by economically. It is also perceived that the “Working class” is lazy, unproductive failures who have limited upward mobility, or relics of earlier era of industrialization. It’s important that people realize the amount of skill level it takes to do different types of jobs, and although pay may not reflect the effort or the soft and technical skills needed, or physicality that is respective for those jobs; these jobs should be viewed respectfully. Jobs like cashiers and waitressing have a bad reputation, but they take a certain skill level that people have to develop just like any other white-collar job. People skills, public speaking, ability to sell items on the menu, multi-tasking, and so much more are necessary to be a success in this type of career choice or job. Matthew Crawford talks about this in his book, along with Mike Rose, on how there is a lack of appreciation and respect for the skill set it takes to do blue collar jobs, and how the stereotypically stigma couldn’t be further than the
Mike Rose has spent most of his life watching those defined as “blue-collar” workers with much appreciation. He would watch his mother, Rosie, and his uncle, Joe, work to their fullest potential with skills he had never really seen anywhere else except in their “blue-collar” world. Mike believes that the way his family worked, as well as others considered “blue-collar”, are intelligent in their own ways and are underappreciated compared to the way he sees them.
At the beginning of the article, Crawford outlined the increased of demand for technical jobs, "making the manual trades- plumbing, electrical work, car repair- more attractive as careers” (n.p). Although it is idealized as "the salt of the earth", in reality, workers are prevented from joining this field by family members (n.p). Believed to be no-brain work, the author argued that trades turn out to require a lot of effort and “metacognition” in order to “eliminate variables…The gap between theory and practice stretches
Rose continues to bring other blue-collar job that requires similar ability and to explain we only try to measure intelligence solely on grades in school and their intelligence at this level. However, he argues that blue-collar intelligence goes far from what we usually can perceive. He ends his argument we the following statement: “If we believe everyday work to be mindless, then that will affect the work we create in the future. When we devalue the full range of everyday cognition, we offer limited educational opportunities and fail to make fresh and meaningful instructional connections among disparate kinds of skill and knowledge. If we think that the whole categories of people—identified by class or occupation---are not that bright, then we reinforce social separations and cripple our ability to talk across cultural divides” (Rose, 2015, p283). In my view, Rose made a very good argument about how Blue-Collar workers are labelled in many cases as intelligence, but he ends this argument by basically said that those who may can to that conclusion are not that smart. If you think about everything, that Rose describes in this essay
Blue Collar workers as the fundamental that makes up America. One such man, author Mike Rose a professor at UCLA, who wrote "Blue-Collar Brilliance," published in a reputable magazine in 2009 in the American Scholar, what Rose argues, is that blue-collar workers often overlooked. In effect, that the establishment of where you work acts as an institution of learning and those without a formal education have valuable types of "brilliance." Rose argues his claim by using pathos, logos through personal stories, credentials, and comprehensive counterarguments.
To start off, the article “The Case for Working With Your Hands” is about Matthew B. Crawford and his decision to start a car repair shop after getting his Ph. D in political philosophy. Crawford starts off the article by discussing a television show called “Deadliest Catch,” and how in today’s society, many people can never see the effects they are having in their career. He goes on by creating a stance that in today’s society, many people will assume that a student must attend a college or university to achieve an overall success instead of following their “own inclinations” (Crawford, Matthew). Crawford talks about how he chose to open up a motorcycle shop to work as a mechanic instead of
In the U.S society, there is a distinguishment between the different classification of employment. Those categories of employment are either classified as “blue-collar” or “white-collar”. Blue-collar jobs are referred to the line of employment that require manual labor such as factory workers and truck drivers, as for the white-collar jobs require high skills and higher education such as doctors and lawyers (Chambliss and Eglitis 159). Although, the professions are labeled as blue or white collar through its needs, the different labels indicates one’s position in the ranks. Each rank is often associated with characteristic that either make them upper class or lower class. Furthermore, “people’s life experience and opportunities are powerfully influenced by how their social category is ranked”(Chambliss and Eglitis 159). Therefore, one’s lifestyle depends on which category they fall into within the rank. That being the case, journalist Alfred Lubrano wrote the book, Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams, which describes the cultural conflict experienced by white-collar professionals that grew up in blue-collar homes. It tells readers how the white-collar professionals found it difficult to apply to their blue-collar families, due to the fact, that they often held values and engaged in behaviors that apply to the upper-class. As in order to fit in within the groups, they would have to adapt to the upper class life. So the transition from a blue-collar life to a
Over many centuries, society tends to frame the obscene differences to antagonize and alienate each other whether it's about a political or religious view, social reasons, or financial situations. In “Blue Collar Brilliance”, Mike Rose provides an invigorating story to persuade his audience to understand that having a blue collar job compared to a white-collar job does not determine how smart someone is. Rose uses anecdotes, rhetorical question, and logos to show that blue-collar workers learn just as much without a formal education.
In my observation mentally with Mr. Roses essay on blue collar brilliance, Mr Rose tries to tell the reader on the different levelsof work there is for high educated people opposed to the non educated. Furthermore he tries express through his family experiences in the work environment how a person with a manual labor is not so different than a person with a high level of education, they are equal in job to job views but not in society.
In this article, “A Toxic Work World” the writer discuss a vital topic in the United States society. Slaughter talks about how employees who are driven away from work because of the struggle with the tension and exhaustion and panic attacks. Even she mentioned how the most ambitious woman are forced out of workplace because they are not eligible to work since they have families to care which a major inequality But the problem is not just for a women it is an antiquated and broken work system. On the other hand, she suggest that the only one who are going to succeed are those young healthy and relatively wealthy because companies prefer those type. Bad work cultural is a problem for everyone who doesn’t have the luxury of a twenty-four-hour caring for a family. Furthermore, women have major shortage in work place and men’s faces incapability’ were work place stated is for the “mad men era”.
When Rodriguez went to have do labor work, as an Unprecedented, he “had not expected such diversity”. Here Rodriguez was astonished because he found a disparate of workers. Here Rodriguez had an onslaught revelation, because his co-worker were neither poor, nor illiterate. So hic co-worker were more related to him more than what he expected. Leaf also says that “educated member of the “creative class” take jobs outside their areas of experience. Here Leaf says that the educated member of the society, especially the young generations, have not a secure work. So they could have o work on an incessant manual work. Here we could notice that people who do manual labor do it not only because they need money, but also because they have no other
A growing body of sociological literature on labor market inequality specifically examines how “soft skills” shape workers’ career trajectories. This research has introduced the concept of “aesthetic labor” (Nickson et